Hokkien and Canto foods can fucked off every Mala now!
Singapore Restaurants Struggle With Influx of Chinese Food Chains
Singapore’s love of dining out hides a brutal battle for survival.
Photographer: Bryan van der Beek/Bloomberg
By Alfred Cang
19 October 2024 at 9:08 AM SGT
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Welcome to the Singapore Edition newsletter. Each week we’ll bring you insights into one of Asia’s most dynamic economies. If you haven’t yet, please sign up here.
This week, Alfred Cang and Natalie Choy sample the influx of overseas restaurants and food chains that are ramping up competition for local eateries, while Low De Wei looks at a history of family real-estate feuds.
‘Darwinian’ Competition
How many of you have heard of Zi Gong? Even in my home country China, this third-tier city in landlocked Sichuan province is mostly overlooked, despite a long history supplying salt — and dinosaur fossils.So I was surprised last year when I encountered the typical ginger and salt-rich cuisine from Zi Gong right here in Bugis. Since then, the dishes at Yanbangcai restaurant have lured me back several times.
Yanbangcai is part of a wave of overseas eateries and bubble-tea shops that have swarmed into Singapore since the pandemic. Among them, Wo Wo Dian, a Sichuan restaurant with roots dating back to 1899, debuted its Singapore outlet in Raffles City a couple of months ago. A few floors up, ramen chain Mensho Tokyoopened in late July. My friends and I have long debated the likely consequences of this boom, in a nation with a smaller population than most Chinese cities and high labor and rent costs.
A report by property consultancy Knight Frank gives a clue: average monthly restaurant closures last year exceeded the pandemic slump of 2020. In the first nine month of this year, things have gotten even worse: monthly closures surged by 20% to 274, from 229 last year. Increasing competition and the “substantial” number of new overseas brands making their way into Singapore has led to a “very Darwinian retail environment,” the report says.
The influx of competitors from abroad has been led by Chinese brands such as Chamoon Hot Potand Bingxue, a famous ice cream and tea chain. Beverage group Chagee returned to Singapore with three stores in Plaza Singapura, Orchard Gateway and Raffles City Shopping Centre. When I scanned the entrance QR code at the latter outlet one night last month, there were several hundred bubble tea orders queued up ahead of me!
Customers queue for bubble tea at the Raffles City Chagee outlet on Aug. 20.Photographer: Alfred Cang/Bloomberg
The arrival of these chains in Singapore is partly explained by the slowdown in China’s economy and stagnant consumption since the pandemic, which intensified competition at home. That led some owners to look abroad for growth, and rich Singapore, with its largely ethnic Chinese population, was an obvious target.
For customers like me, the venues offering strong-flavored hotpots and other spicy Sichuan and Hunan cuisines are also a way to get together with groups of like-minded young people sharing the uncertainties and dramas of their lives.
This kind of business migration prompted by geopolitical and economic shifts is not uncommon. Surging migration from Hong Kong sparked by political upheavals in the Chinese territory triggered a revival for Cantonese cuisine in Britain and a wave of new openings in London. —Alfred Cang
